Vegan emergency food in Yamada Denki

Last week, my PC didn’t work well, and I had difficulty entering characters. I wondered whether it was the PC or keyboard that had a trouble. I went to Yamada Denki, a chain of consumer electronics stores, where I bought the PC four years ago.

Like Bic Camera, another chain of consumer electronics stores, Yamada Denki sells some other things such as food, drink, and convenience goods, in addition to consumer electronics. On that day, they even had emergency food that were sold at a discount. I bought two items that seemed to be vegan. One of them is Gomoku Gohan that literally means rice with five ingredients.

Usually, such a rice dish contains chicken. But this one doesn’t contain any animal ingredients according to the description on the backside. The five ingredients added to the rice are dried carrot, deep-fried tofu, dried burdock, dried shiitake mushroom, and konjac. They are flavored with plant oil, soy sauce, and sugar. The package also has a table of 27 allergens specified in the Food Labeling Act in Japan.

*えび (shrimp), かに (crab), 小麦 (wheat), そば (buckwheat)
 卵 (egg), 乳成分 (milk), 落花生 (peanut), あわび (abalone)
いか (squid), いくら (salmon roe), オレンジ (orange), カシューナッツ (cashew nut)
キウイ (kiwifruit), 牛肉 (beef), くるみ (walnut), ごま (sesame)
さけ (salmon), さば (mackerel), 大豆 (soybean), 鶏肉 (chicken)
バナナ (banana), 豚肉 (pork), まつたけ (matsutake mushroom), もも (peach)
やまいも (yam), りんご (apple), ゼラチン (gelatin)

The words 小麦 (wheat) and 大豆 (soybean) are highlighted, which means that this product contains these ingredients.

It is very easy to prepare this Gomoku Gohan. First, I took the spoon and the oxygen absorber out of the package.

Then I poured 160 ml hot water into it, closed it, and waited for 15 minutes. As it is a kind of emergency food, you can eat it directly from the package. But I wanted to see how it look like on a dish.

It tasted light and seemed to be suitable for everyone expect those allergic to wheat and soybeans. I think I’ll buy some more while they are sold at a discount.
The other vegan item from Yamada Denki is Rice Cookies. They are made from rice powder, rice oil, sugar, sweetened coconut puree, almond flour, fermented seasoning (rice, salt), shredded coconut. Any of the 27 allergens isn’t contained in them.

The rice powder is from Niigata Prefecture that is famous as a major cultivation area of rice.

The cookies looked delicious.

One of them was broken. They seemed to be fragile but were crispy and tasty. I thought the texture was very much like that of langue de chat, French thin cookies.

Both Gomoku Gohan and Rice Cookies are the products of Onisi (尾西). I heard this company’s name for the first time, but I appreciate their efforts to provide such food. Though it is not clearly described that they are vegan, they are vegan-friendly products. In addition, both of them bear the Halal mark.

As I wrote before, it has been very difficult to find vegan food in Japan. But it seems that more and more companies have come to release vegan-friendly products recently. I think I’ll stop writing this blog now. Thank you for reading.

My blog is mainly intended for visitors or inhabitants from abroad, but in fact I myself like traveling and wish to visit some countries after corona. So, I intend to study hard in my free time to improve my language skills from now on. I wish you’ll enjoy your stay in Japan. Thank you again!

Fruit without flower

Yesterday, I got some fresh figs that my mother bought at a local farmers’ market.

Though it seemed possible to peel the fruits by hand, I used a knife not to deform them too much. They were so soft. In Japanese, figs are called “ichijiku”. It is sometimes written as 無花果 that means a fruit without flower. I wondered where this mysterious name came from and checked some websites. Then I learned that fig trees never have flowers that look like flowers. To my surprise, the flowers are the grain-like things in the red parts of the fruits! They looked delicious.

The taste is difficult to explain. They had a gentle sweetness, but their soft texture and a grainy texture in the red part were more impressive. I remembered that dried figs in some bread also had the same grainy texture though they were much sweeter and very different from fresh ones.

I’m not sure if I like fresh figs or not because I'm more used to eat dried ones. I have had an image that figs are good for beauty. According to some websites, they are called “fruits for eternal youth.” They have polyphenols to make the skin beautiful and potassium to prevent swelling. They also improve intestinal condition. As its season continues to October, I may have more opportunities to eat them.